The eCommerce Lab project

April 19, 2013

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In December, our teacher Mikael Forsström approached us three Business Students about a possibility to take part in an eCommerce Lab-project. Arcada was planning a project in collaboration with Itella, Maksuturva, Finnish Commerce Federation (Kaupan Liitto) and Vilkas Group. The aim of the project was to create an eCommerce Lab-demonstration for an eCommerce-seminar held by the Finnish Commerce Federation. Purpose of the project was to give insight about the actual processes done in a web shop back office.

For the purpose of this demonstration we build a web shop called Arc Store, which sells Arcada-branded merchandise. We were provided with eShop software ePages by Vilkas Group. The process of building the web shop started with designing the layout and the logo. Next we took product and commercial pictures for the eShop, in which few of Arcada’s students very kindly modeled for us. We edited the pictures ourselves, added the product information to the eShop, as well as the legal information such as delivery terms. For our presentation, we also shot two short films demonstrating how SmartPost parcel points work. We also integrated the payment options service provided by Maksuturva and delivery option SmartPost by Itella.

Our shop www.arcstore.fi is a fully functional web shop, but it is not open for real business, as it was built only for educational purposes. We tested the buying process by actually purchasing the products and sending them to ourselves via SmartPost.

Based on the ideas from the partners we created the eCommerce Lab concept, which was then presented at the seminar. The audience consisted mainly of business people interested in the possibilities of eCommerce as a way to connect with consumers. The seminar took place on four consecutive Wednesdays in February and March and was held at Finnish Commerce Federation premises in Eteläranta. The days had different agendas such as overview of the market, multi-channel customer management, online and mobile marketing, and logistics of a web shop.

In our demonstration we presented the requirements for opening a web shop and demonstrated the buying and return process both from the merchant’s and customer’s point of view. The night before the demonstration we set up the eCommerce Lab room, which included an office for the Arc Store merchant and a living room for the customer.

The project turned out great! The project partners were very pleased with the outcome of the demonstration and the audience enjoyed our presentation. Taking part in the project was very interesting and useful experience for us as well as a great opportunity for networking with the participants of the seminar.